Residencies

Annie-B Parson / Big Dance Theater

Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar of Big Dance Theater have been making work for more than twenty years and bring a highly theatrical approach to their work, which often merges text and movement in unique ways. They founded Big Dance Theater in 1991 with Molly Hickok. Together they have created over 15 works for the company, ranging from pure dance pieces, to adaptations of plays and literature, to original works combining wildly disparate materials. Their work has been commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music, The National Theater of Paris/ Chaillot, The Japan Society, The Walker Art Center, and has been presented in scores of other venues.

Big Dance Theater had an intensive weeklong residency at VPL in August 2013 to develop movement and sound material for the dance-theater piece, Alan Smithee Directed This Play. The work used three iconic films as choreographic source material that inspired stylistic tropes, movement scores and skeletal text. Big Dance Theater worked with a group of twleve pre-teens from the local community to develop movement and sound material.

This residency is part of The Hatchery Project, a new collaborative residency initiative with The Chocolate Factory (Long Island City, NY), Fringe Arts (Philadelphia, PA), Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography at Florida State University (Tallahassee, FL), and Vermont Performance Lab (Guilford, VT) and is made possible with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon. Additional support for the Vermont residency is provided by VPL’s Creation Fund donors.